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Maxime de la Falaise

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Maxime de la Falaise
Born
Maxine Birley

(1922-06-25)25 June 1922
West Dean, West Sussex, England, UK
Died30 April 2009(2009-04-30) (aged 86)
Provence, France
NationalityEnglish-Irish
Known forModel, actress, author
Spouses
Count Alain Le Bailly de La Falaise
​
​
(m. 1946; div. 1950)​
  • John McKendry
ChildrenLoulou Le Bailly de La Falaise
Alexis Le Bailly de La Falaise
Parent(s)Sir Oswald Birley
Rhoda Vava Mary Lecky Pike
RelativesMark Birley (brother)
Hugh Hornby Birley (2x great-grandfather)

Maxime Le Bailly, comtesse de La Falaise (25 June 1922 – 30 April 2009),[1][2] was an English-Irish 1950s model,[3] and, in the 1960s, an underground movie actress.[4] She was also a cookery writer and "food maven"[5] as well as a fashion designer for Blousecraft, Chloé and Gérard Pipart.[6] In her later years she pursued a career as a furniture and interior designer.[7]

Early life

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She was born 22 June 1922 in West Dean, West Sussex, England as Maxine Birley[8] into a family of successful artists, businesspeople and academics. She grew up in Hampstead, and later at Charleston Manor, East Sussex. Her father, Sir Oswald Birley (1880–1952), was a celebrated portrait painter known for his portraits of royalty and others.[9][10] Her mother was Rhoda Vava Mary Lecky Pike, of County Carlow, a gardener and successful artist.[11] Maxine's brother, Mark Birley (1930–2007), became an entrepreneur known for his investments in the hospitality industry.[12]

She changed her first name to Maxime after her first marriage, to French aristocrat Alain Le Bailly de La Falaise, in 1946.[6][13] She was known as Maxime de La Falaise McKendry, for a while, after her second marriage to John McKendry, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Metropolitan Museum.[4][14]

Career

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During the Second World War, she worked as a minor codebreaker at Bletchley Park, before being invalided out after developing kleptomania.[15][6]

Fashion

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In the 1950s, Maxime de La Falaise worked for Elsa Schiaparelli as a vendeuse mondaine which she explained as "a sort of muse who was supposed to encourage sales to the rich English".[15] She modelled for photographers such as Jack Robinson and Cecil Beaton.[16] She "dressed with uninhibited chic"[3] and according to The Independent newspaper and fashion magazine Tatler, Cecil Beaton once called her "the only truly chic Englishwoman."[17][18]

Writing

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While living in New York Maxime de La Falaise wrote a food column for Vogue magazine.[6] In 1980, she published a collection of these columns, with her own illustrations, under the title Food in Vogue. In 1973 she published Seven Centuries of English Cooking: A Collection of Recipes.[6] She also wrote the foreword to My Kingdom of Books (1999) by Richard Booth.[19]

Andy Warhol

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Andy Warhol envisioned Maxime de La Falaise as part of Andy Warhol's Nothing Serious, his 1971 video project designed for television.[14] Warhol included her along with such personalities as Candy Darling and Brigid Berlin in his 1973 black-and-white video Phoney (later incorporated into the 1991 Andy Warhol's Video & Television Retrospective).[14]

She also appeared in the 1974 film Blood for Dracula (not made by Warhol despite being titled Andy Warhol's Dracula in the US and West Germany).[6]

According to the New York Times in 1977, Warhol had La Falaise design a menu for Andymat, Warhol's version of the automat, which included onion tarts, shepherds' pie, fish cakes, Irish lamb stew, key lime pie and a "nursery cocktail" of milk on the rocks. Her association with Warhol was such that one source called her "The Factory mother."[20]

Personal life

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On 18 July 1946, Maxime Birley became the second wife of Count (comte) Alain Le Bailly de La Falaise, (1905—1977) and was styled Countess (comtesse) Maxime de La Falaise.[1] They divorced in 1950, following a series of her infidelities, including an affair with British ambassador Duff Cooper.[6] They had two children:

Maxime de La Falaise married, as her second husband, John McKendry, curator of prints and photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who died in 1975. During the marriage it has been suggested that he had an affair with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe,[22][failed verification] while she had one with J. Paul Getty III, artist Max Ernst, and film director Louis Malle.[6][23][24] La Falaise is said to have aided Mapplethorpe's entry "into high society, European and American."[25]

Maxime de La Falaise died of natural causes, aged 86, at her home in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Provence, on 30 April 2009.[2]

References

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  1. ^ a b White, Belinda (23 June 2015). "Who's That Girl: Ella Richards". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 21 August 2019. 1955 photo titled "Countess Maxima de la Falaise"
  2. ^ a b Fox, Margalit (1 May 2009). "Maxime de la Falaise, model, Designer and Muse, Is Dead at 86". The New York Times. Retrieved 2 May 2009.
  3. ^ a b c "The Little Extras – The Runway Divas". Retrieved 2 December 2022.
  4. ^ a b Steger, Pat (28 May 1974). "Those European Prices". San Francisco Chronicle.
  5. ^ "The Jack Robinson Gallery and Archive". Archived from the original on 24 December 2005. Retrieved 2 December 2022.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h Veronica Howell (9 May 2009). "Obituary:Maxime de la Falaise". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 22 September 2011.
  7. ^ "Style Court: Maxime de la Falaise". 7 June 2008.
  8. ^ Burke's Landed Gentry. 1952. p. 186. Archived from the original on 23 February 2005.
  9. ^ http://www.charleston-manor.org.uk/ Charleston Manor
  10. ^ "Biography of Oswald Birley". Archived from the original on 24 August 2004. Retrieved 15 September 2008.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  11. ^ Irvine, Chippy (1990). Private New York: Remarkable Residences. Abbeville Press. p. 37. ISBN 978-1-55859-106-6.
  12. ^ "Mark Birley - Telegraph". 23 December 2007. Archived from the original on 23 December 2007. Retrieved 19 January 2023.
  13. ^ Husband's full name, Alain R. Le Bailly de La Falaise, is cited on his September 1946 marriage license, accessed on ancestry.com on 7 November 2011
  14. ^ a b c "Andy Warhol - Nothing Serious". www.warholstars.org. Retrieved 2 December 2022.
  15. ^ a b "Maxime de la Falaise". London: The Telegraph. 3 May 2009. Retrieved 22 September 2011.
  16. ^ Archived copy Archived 15 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine Michael Hoppen Gallery
  17. ^ Encyclopedia The Independent, 10 September 2004 excerpt re Cecil Beaton quote [permanent dead link]
  18. ^ a b Bridger-Linning, Stephanie (25 January 2023). "Relative values: Who's who in Ella Richards' famous family?". Tatler. Retrieved 3 October 2024.
  19. ^ Booth, Richard; Stuart, Lucia (1999). My Kingdom of Books. Y Lolfa. ISBN 978-0-86243-495-3.
  20. ^ A Lucid Spoonful
  21. ^ Horyn, Cathy (28 July 2017). "On Rue St.-Honoré, Paris". The New York Times. Retrieved 16 February 2023.
  22. ^ "Robert Mapplethorpe, 'John McKendry' 1975, printed 1992". Tate. Retrieved 9 August 2016.
  23. ^ Haramis, Nick. Because the night BlackBook.com, 22 July 2008
  24. ^ Tate article
  25. ^ "Drummer magazine". Archived from the original on 22 January 2009. Retrieved 10 September 2016.
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